


Things Given, Undeserved

by editoress



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Inquisitor & Dorian Pavus Friendship, Inquisitor & Solas Friendship, Protectiveness, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-16
Updated: 2021-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-24 13:28:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30072969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/editoress/pseuds/editoress
Summary: This is something you choose. It’s in every burden you shoulder for someone else, either because they can’t bear the weight or because you will not let them carry it alone. Love can’t be earned. You share it anyway.Three-shot of the yearning drama of a tank/tank romance.
Relationships: Adaar/Thom Rainier, Female Adaar/Blackwall (Dragon Age)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	Things Given, Undeserved

**Author's Note:**

> It hurt my feelings to call him Blackwall, but this chapter is set between the arrival at Skyhold and his trial.

Adaar felt the blow that struck Blackwall. Like a missed step, the conspicuous absence of pain was its own shock. A shadow of a figure, overlooked in the thick of the fighting, moved in close at the edge of her vision; the sound of rending armor split the air. Adaar braced herself too late but felt nothing, and the knowledge that someone  _ else _ had been hit became panic, adrenaline: phantom sensation on her back where she imagined she ought to have been struck.

There was a groan—Blackwall by the timbre, a real wound by the strain in his voice. Adaar pressed her heels into the earth and shoved her venatori combatants with all her might. They were large, for humans, and heavy with plate armor; but Adaar was larger and outfitted much the same. Two stumbled back and crashed into a third. In that one moment with just enough space to breathe, she spun, searching. Behind her, Blackwall had already wedged his blade into the venatori’s ribs and was grimly driving him down and back. “Turn around!” he barked.

The air grew thick, and the hair on the back of her neck stood on end. She faced her opponents and, at the same time, lunged away from them, out of range. The lead warrior took a single step to follow before lightning cracked blinding white over them. One and all, they screamed and fell. Adaar stayed well away from the dancing fingers of electricity. She smelled burnt flesh and forge-hot metal.

“Finally!” cried Dorian. He was well behind her and had climbed a low boulder for a better vantage point. “Maker, do you have to run into the middle of them all?”

The spell dissipated with a final flicker. One venatori struggled to rise. Adaar watched him carefully until he grasped his sword; then she stepped forward and struck him down. In the aftermath of magic and ringing metal, even her heavy breathing fell like silence. She sheathed her sword and turned. Dorian stepped lightly off his perch. He was tousled from effort but untouched. The only injury was Blackwall’s, running red down the front of his armor. His left arm hung limp.

“Blackwall,” she began.

“I’m all right,” he said gruffly. “Nothing that won’t mend.”

“Better get to mending,” Dorian advised as he joined them. He gave the wound an uneasy glance. Adaar knew better than to ask for his assistance in this. He had informed her smartly, more than once, that his talents did not lie with the living. Dorian cleared his throat and made a courtly cross-step toward the nearest hilltop. “Perhaps somewhere with more room.”

Blackwall grunted a single, pained laugh. “You just fried four men alive, and a little blood turns your stomach?”

Dorian turned away with a wave. “You’re welcome!” he said sourly.

He led them from the site of the skirmish. Adaar did not do Blackwall the disservice of taking hold of him, but she walked near enough to be leaned on. The effort he put forward to keep even this slow pace tugged at her heart. Yet he neither spoke nor let her take any of his weight. Dorian had time to carefully survey the surrounding countryside and still was forced to wait for them to catch up to him. He stood at the hilltop and examined Adaar, brow furrowed, as she approached.

She gave as reassuring a smile as she could muster when she felt that same concern. “ _ I’m _ fine.”

“Not for lack of trying,” Dorian muttered. Before she could ask his meaning, he continued, “At any rate, it seems safe enough.”

And so it was. Dorian kept an unhurried watch, with nothing to look at but the shifting patterns of cloud shadow over the landscape. Blackwall sat unceremoniously, and this time he took Adaar’s proffered hand to ease the impact when he landed. Adaar knelt by his side and began unbuckling his pauldron. As much as she admired the craft, she had never been a healer by trade; but she had been a mercenary and was familiar enough with binding gashes. Blackwall picked at the straps of his chestplate with his good hand until that, too, came loose. The venatori’s blade had come at such an angle that it had dented only the inner edge of the pauldron; the rest had bitten into cloth and flesh.

“Ah! Your gambeson,” Adaar murmured apologetically.

“My favorite gambeson,” Blackwall returned dryly, and the fact he could joke dragged a weak smile from her.

He moved to awkwardly untie that, too, but Adaar made a wordless sound of disapproval and waved him away. She shifted in front of him and deftly loosened the ties herself. Blackwall tilted his head back, perhaps to keep his beard out of the way and perhaps to avoid meeting her eyes. Adaar considered it a kind of patience in either case. For that patience, she worked swiftly. Every layer removed yielded more blood and tightened her chest painfully. The wound was not as deep as she had feared, but it still endangered the muscles and welled blood. She hastened to clean it with as light a touch as she could. But her hands were not delicate, and Blackwall flinched.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“We’re at war,” he said plainly. He had turned his face away from her now. “People get hurt.”

Though he could not see her, she shook her head, thinking:  _ not you _ . She bowed her head over her work, rapidly layering bandages into a dressing. “Even so.”

He exhaled, the sound closer than she expected. Adaar glanced up to find that he had half turned to eye her. “Not the first time nor the last,” he said. There was a rough, unpracticed gentleness in his voice. “For either of us.”

For a long moment, Adaar pinned her attention on wrapping his shoulder, afraid that Blackwall would spot her relief at having been offered something like forgiveness. Perhaps it was selfish to treasure that when it couldn’t change the bloody facts of the situation, but it gave her comfort nevertheless.

Blackwall continued, “You should be used to this sort of thing.”

“No!” she said, and then hastily continued in a lighter tone, “How could I be used to anyone shielding me?” Her smile was thin and sheepish. “I tower over practically everyone.”

Blackwall looked at her sharply. “It’s not that,” he retorted. “It’s that you’re terrified of anyone but you being on the front lines.”

Nearby, Dorian coughed horrendously, but Adaar hardly noticed; she was looking at the hard fierceness of Blackwall’s face. She forgot, sometimes, that he had spent part of his life as a soldier or mercenary of some kind: not a champion for a cause, not a knight full of ideals, but a man who had seen grueling, bloody, unromantic battle for no reason besides orders and coin. He was neither distracted nor satisfied by the brave face relied upon by the Inquisition troops, and he cared as little for the heroic image of the Inquisitor that proved so useful to her advisors. No matter how advantageous or gallant, he knew fear for what it was.

Four months ago, Adaar had been gifted thousands of lives and told with great pride that they were in her hands now.

She said, “If I had been paying more attention—”

“I’m here to watch your back,” Blackwall interrupted ruthlessly. “If you’re not going to let me do that, then—” Here his expression tightened to something brief and unreadable before growing flinty again. “Then don’t bring me along.”

She knelt there, stunned. Blackwall so rarely showed real anger, and what she faced now was not for his own near miss. Nor was it entirely anger; something terrible and familiar colored it. He was far closer than she was accustomed to. One of her hands rested on his chest, where she had paused in wrapping the bandage. That wanted finishing, but she was caught in Blackwall’s keen gaze. It demanded an answer.

The only answer she had was a strained, “I’ve never led before.” Then she bent and tied off the bandages, carefully. She would not let her hands shake.

“But you’ve fought before,” he pointed out, with less iron in his voice. “And you’ve obviously done  _ this _ before.” He reached for his neatly bound shoulder and covered her hand with his. “See? Good as new.”

Adaar’s heart jumped at the touch. More than that, she marveled at how steady this man could stay. Blackwall was the only person in the world to make her think that maybe she could safely lean on him, just a little. It couldn’t be: she had enough regrets today regarding her friend compensating for her weaknesses. But the notion would not leave her mind entirely, and when she helped him shrug on his ruined gambeson, it afforded her a few more seconds of warmth from his presence.

Blackwall grunted as he got to his feet. “You’ll learn to lead,” he told her. “But don’t forget how to fight  _ alongside  _ people.”

Dorian had busied himself with keeping watch almost across the hilltop, yet for all that, Adaar heard it clearly when he said, “Hear, hear.” He caught sight of Adaar’s frown and raised his hands to signal a gracious exit from the conversation.

“Dorian,” Adaar pleaded.

Dorian sighed heavily and rejoined them. “You keep blade-swinging barbarians at a safe distance, which is exactly where I prefer them to be,” he explained. “I appreciate that. But I  _ am _ capable.”

Adaar started. She had never thought otherwise. “I didn’t mean—”

“Oh, I know that, you great oaf!” Dorian clasped her shoulders and shook her a little, exasperated. “You just  _ worry _ too much. I’m a very talented and deadly necromancer, and unlike you, I chose to be here.”

Every word was true, yet her mind struggled against the realization that she, among all the Inquisition’s forces, had never volunteered. She stared speechlessly at Dorian for a moment and then, feeling rather simple, said, “You’re right.”

He smiled warmly and let her go. “And you’re as much my friend as I am yours, yes?” He cuffed her lightly on the arm. “So if you would box my ears for recklessness, don’t embody it yourself.”

Dorian’s voice was as glib as ever, but there was something grave in the way he watched her. Blackwall stood quietly to the side. The rare temper was gone, and it had left behind lines of worry in his expression. Like Blackwall, Adaar could recognize fear. It should not have gladdened her to see, but she had never felt so profoundly loved as she did now. For all her titles, duties, and higher purposes, she—Adaar, one mortal, frightened woman—was not without defenders.

When she could speak again, Adaar said, “There’s a stronghold not far north of here. There should be a healer.”

“I can make it,” Blackwall said in answer to her unspoken question. “He got my shoulder, not my knee.”

They descended to the road. Dorian walked ahead; Blackwall’s gait was still a little sluggish, and Adaar was reluctant to leave his side, despite the fact that the danger had passed. The road proved easy and as clear as it had seemed from their vantage point, and finally, something like peace settled.

“Blackwall,” said Adaar.

He hummed in response. His eyes scanned their surroundings in the easy, regular way of a soldier.

She watched him for a moment. Very softly, she said, “Thank you.”

Blackwall met her gaze. His brows drew together. He did not ask what she meant. Neither did she ask about his reply, low and so solemn it might have been an oath. “Whenever you need me.”


End file.
